


haven't told you everything

by TolkienGirl



Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Doubt, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e05 Bloody Mary, Gen, POV Dean Winchester, References to Stanford!era, Secrets, an explanation for Dean's Bloody Mary secret we never learn about, great lakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Whose death was bleeding out of your eyes?
Relationships: Cassie Robinson/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777720
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	haven't told you everything

The one upside of Sam being a clam-mouthed son-of-a-bitch is that he won’t ask Dean any questions, either.

Toledo to the shore of Erie; not a long drive. It snows between night and morning, though, and there’s salt and a light dusting of flakes softer than salt on the blacktop. The world feels packed with cotton wool inside and out, anyway. Bloody Mary packed a killer headache for both of them, and they keep quiet except for checking in about bathroom breaks, or breakfast.

Erie is still itself. All the Great Lakes are ocean-wide to landlocked travelers. Sam, who went west to a real shore, shivers and won’t ask—

_What secret do you have that you didn’t think was good enough? Whose death was bleeding out of your eyes?_

Dean squints at him. It’s past noon; sun knows it has to set in a couple hours. “You throw away your old coat in Cali?”

Sam’s mouth is a sour twist. “It was in pieces, dude.”

Dean’s extra Carhartt is, of course, too small for him. They’ll have to do something about that.

For now, they get back in the car.

_Whose death?_

Maybe Dean’s gone maudlin, in the years he’s been mostly on his own. Sam doesn’t think much of Dean’s virtue, doesn’t want to know what he’s done in the dark. Sam has seen him be brutal when he had to be. Seen him screw up when he shouldn’t have.

Sam left him, after all. Left the old Dean, who was no better than the new Dean, just younger.

_Cali. Two years._

In point of fact, Sammy was in his fourth year at Stanford, a month ago, but they’d talked once along the livelong way. The secret, if Dean can call it that, intersects there. _There_ , when Dean asked for help from a brother whose empty space in the car said _screw you_ , clear as day _._

Dean hadn’t cared, for once. He’d been on the wrong side of Cassie and had fired too quickly on a solo hunt. He didn’t tell Sam that. He just called.

There’s black-out drunk and then there’s the clarity of the last glass of whiskey.

_I know what I’m doing so I must be sober. I know what I’m—_

_“Dean?”_

Sam had sounded older, and somehow, the same.

Dean kept the secret, that night. Drunk cried, though. An embarrassment all around, that phone call. Other than referencing it in a one-off, _what-about-it_ way in Palo Alto, he won’t bring it up again.

The girl had screamed like the banshee. Or maybe the banshee had thrown its voice into an innocent throat.

He’ll never know.

They jackknife back along the highway, going west. St. Louis is calling, soon, but Dean doesn’t know that yet. What he does know is an uncomfortable truth too plain to be hidden.

Sam is the one with purpose, mystery, dark places inside he needs protecting from. So no, he won’t ask Dean for answers.

Dean’s second-best, even to a ghost.


End file.
